Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream

January 4, 1999
Anyone who thinks high art and performance poetry don't mix should re-read "Howl" and then pick up Herrera's latest, following 1994's Night Train to Tuxtla. Wryly drawing on our expectations of "ethnic" poetry ("my Neo-American uzzi mutations, my upgraded/ 2Pac thresholds"), Herrera performs the rare trick of simultaneously speaking from a self-aware, culturally marginalized perspective, while refusing to limit his poetic horizons--as in the tour-de-force opener "punk half panther": "Meet my barriohood, meet me/ with the froth i pick up everyday & everyday/ i wipe away with ablution & apologia & a smirk, then/ a smile on my Cholo-Millennium liberation jacket." As comfortable surfing the info-glut ("digital in its global suture ticktock of our existence") as in "the Kaliwey prayer house of the forgotten hope-shoe makers," Herrera's political salvos and satires can be surprisingly lyrical, as if not quite able to give up the idea of beauty: "You the King: you the tiger speaks the long grain hump, hear/ it sing to you, with a crooked guitar, wine colored string." This collection puts most academic poetry to shame, and, along with the work of poets like Luis Rodriguez, evidences an opening in the impasse between partisans of street-wise staccato and page-wise pleasure.

January 1, 1999
Herrera's writing has continually drawn attention to aspects of his people's heritage, whether it be the Barrio or the Maya. In Love After the Riots (LJ 4/1/96), Herrera proved himself capable of deep lyricism despite adverse circumstances, reminiscent perhaps of Neruda's The Captain's Verses (LJ 9/15/72). True to its title, Border-Crosser tackles legal and illegal immigration, America as the diaspora, and conflicting cultures, highlighted in the comic image of the immigrant "digging deep" in a boat filled with bananas, mangoes, plantains, and jalapenos. The poems in this volume are technically diverse, from the performance aspects of Herrera's readings and plays to long lines, incantations, and surrealism borrowed from the 1960s Beat poets. But diversity is not necessarily better. Despite certain reservations, there are enough gems in this collection--"lord jim" and "we are all saying the same thing" to name two--to make it well worth reading. Recommended especially for urban libraries.--Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York